The 6 Cold Calling Skills You Really Need

In the June Research magazine, I discussed “cold calling success zones” and sketched out the numbers you need for success in this sales activity. If you are cold calling, quit because you failed, or know you need to do it, my cold calling calculator will help you determine what you have to master in order to succeed. You will find a link to the calculator at www.billgood.com/coldcalling.

In this article, I’m going to pick up where that left off. I am going to show you how to get each of your statistics in the success zone. As you read this, I strongly suggest you go to my calculator and fill it in as I go through the statistics. This is a good way to get an excellent understanding of this process.

I’m going to start with an impossible scenario. Given my assumptions, embedded in the tables nearby, you could raise $5 million in new assets per year from cold calling if you have 97 hours a week to devote to prospecting and selling, which is of course ridiculous.

We are going to assume a two- or three-appointment sales process. Let’s say half of your first appointments don’t pan out. Obviously, then, 50% of first appointments produce second appointments. Some people will buy on the second appointment. But let’s further assume that 50% of second appointments produce a third appointment. Based on your own statistics, you can certainly see how this affects your selling time.

A couple of notes about terminology:

Cherry: One who is interested and qualified and willing to receive investment literature.

Hot Prospect: Someone very interested, and financially qualified, who sets an appointment. Mostly, hot prospects are sent from cherry leads.

Six Vital Skills

Years ago, cold calling was really easy. You would get a hold of my tax-free bond funds script, learn and apply the concept that we are only looking for people who are interested and qualified now, make 60 calls an hour, generate three cherries an hour, and you could open 200 new client relations a year. Different ballgame today. Yes, cold calling still works, but every single element has to be “in the zone.”

Come along with me as we take a look at each of the skills necessary to grow your business through cold calling.

1. Prospecting

Prospecting skills are almost totally a numbers game. If you can generate enough prospects per hour so that the rest of your statistics add up to a reasonable amount of hours required for cold calling and selling, you’re doing a good job.

The key statistic is: cherries per hour. I suppose there’s a scenario where you can generate less than one per hour and still succeed, but it would be rough.

With that said, if we change our “cherries per hour” from 0.5 to 1.0, we cut the number of prospecting and selling hours from 97 to 57.

Let’s see what happens if we increase it from 1.0 to 1.5.

Now you are required to do 27 hours of cold calling, and an additional 17 hours of selling per week. The total is 44 hours. The greenest rookie could make it. It would take discipline. Many, many hours of work. But it could happen.

You still can’t get there from here, but I wanted to show you the dramatic effect that a change in the “cherries per hour” statistic has.

Now the question becomes: How do you increase cherries per hour?

Call during optimum hours. For calling business owners, professionals or highly compensated corporate ­employees, follow this schedule:

7:30 a.m.–9:15 a.m., Monday–Friday.